Black Flies

by Shannon Burke

  The cops laughed again. The young cop coughed.

  “I think I’m coming down with something.” The lieutenant put on a gimme a fuckin’ break look. The young cop shrugged. “Tyson was gonna get like ten million dollars for fighting him. What’m I gonna get?”

  The lieutenant thought about this.You could see he thought the rookie had a point. He walked over to where LaFontaine, Verdis, Rutkovsky, Hatsuru, and I were gathered.

  “Guy didn’t do anything wrong. This’s medical,” the lieutenant said.

  “He’s punching at people, grabbing at women,” LaFontaine said. “He’s disturbing the peace. Better arrest him.”

  “He’s in an altered mental state. He has to be medically cleared,” the cop said.

  “Well, that’s true,” LaFontaine said. Then, “What’s he on?”

  “PCP,” Rutkovsky said, and LaFontaine shook his head.

  “Like he’s the guy who needs superstrength. Maybe we should call the Bronx Zoo. Get one of those guys with the poison darts.”

  Verdis stood there with his arms crossed.

  “Poison darts. Shit. I’ll talk to him.”

  “Sure you don’t wanna wait on the darts?” I said sarcastically.

  Verdis waved for all of us to stand back. He didn’t care. He was like that. He was the dorky do-gooder, but he wasn’t afraid to talk to Mitch Green on angel dust. He took a deep breath and walked right up to Green and stuck his hand out. Green looked at Verdis’s hand a moment, then took it. A minute later Verdis and Green were talking and while they were I noticed Green closing his hands into fists, then opening them up again. Punching at the air a few times, but slowly. He didn’t seem to be doing it to intimidate Verdis. It was like he was just passing the time, punching the air, nothing violent about it, but he was warming up, getting ready. I remember noticing that Green had enormous hands; hands that could have gone all the way around a brick. If he wanted to he could have knocked Verdis cold in an instant. But he didn’t do it. They were just standing there, hanging out, while all the cops and EMS people stood around them, watching, except Rutkovsky, who’d gotten the stretcher and was circling around. We were on a wide sidewalk area. There was a line of cars on the street. Rutkovsky wheeled the stretcher into the street and bent down so Green did not see him. Rutkovsky went back up onto the sidewalk and came up behind Green quietly. Meanwhile,Verdis pointed off in the other direction, distracting Green. Rutkovsky crept up really close, moving in slowly until the stretcher was directly behind Green.

  “Get ready,” LaFontaine said to me. “You ready to kick ass?”

  “Definitely. I can take him,” I said.

  Suddenly, Verdis shoved Green. Green fell back into the stretcher and we all ran in, but then Green jumped back up and everyone stopped except me. I grabbed Green’s arm. He lashed out at me and I was knocked back. I jumped up and was knocked back again. But Rutkovsky was on Green then, and there was a moment where it was just those two, Rutkovsky and Green, lashing out at each other. Green was punching and Rutkovsky was knocking his hands away with some martial-arts-type moves. Then Rutkovsky got a hold on him and pushed him down on the stretcher. Amazing, really. For a moment Rutkovsky was subduing Mitch Green single-handedly. Then everyone else ran up to help. Twelve cops and six EMS guys, holding Green’s arms, his head, his legs, while Green yowled and thrashed about. We were binding Green to the stretcher with cravats, holding his head so he wouldn’t bite us, yelling at him to calm down, calm the fuck down. Five minutes after that all the cops were brushing themselves off, Green was in the back of the ambulance tied to the stretcher, and Verdis was sitting next to him, explaining patiently that he wasn’t arrested, that we were taking him to the hospital to give him time to sober up, that he’d be let out in the morning, that he’d been grabbing at people and he couldn’t do that. Green was taking this all in, seeming to understand, starting to settle down, when LaFontaine stuck his head in and shouted, “Hey Mitch, whatta you think about Tyson?”

  “Tyson’s a homo!” Green shouted, thrashing against the binds.

  “Way to calm him down,” I said.

  “I couldn’t help myself,” LaFontaine said, grinning.

  A minute after that we were on the way to the hospital. I noticed that Rutkovsky was particularly quiet. He’d just been fighting with Green, and there was a weird, bright look in his eyes. He was wound up, making fluttery, jittery motions with his hands. He didn’t say a word for the entire ride to the hospital.

  Afterward we all stood in the ER bay, laughing about it. I pulled my collar down to show where I’d have a bruise.

  “Dumbass,” LaFontaine said. “Running in there first. Fucking dumbass. But you’re tougher than you look. Not like my partner.” Hatsuru leaned against the wall, going over a study sheet in his palm. He’d been the last person to go in.

  “Like I’m going after some prizefighter,” Hatsuru said, without looking up.

  “I thought Cross’d kick his ass,” Marmol said, which made everyone laugh.

  Through all of this Rutkovsky stood to the side. He’d single-handedly subdued Green. He had more reason to brag than anyone. But he just walked off on his own and stood there smoking, that momentary bright look fading into a sullen frown. Rutkovsky was always like that. A momentary brightness on the exciting jobs that faded into distance and disdain. As he lit a cigarette I noticed that his hands were shaking.

  “In 1988 a 737 crashed into the Potomac River, killing 232 passengers. As you all know, the protocol is that no one is dead until they are warm and dead, so there were hundreds of rescue workers doing CPR on frozen dead bodies until they could be warmed up enough to pronounce them DOA. A whole team of psychologists was hired to treat the workers after that job. I was part of the stress debriefing team. For months the rescue workers came in, talking about nightmares, insomnia, and this one image—rows and rows of frozen corpses. A year later eighty percent of the rescue workers at the scene were divorced or separated.”

  Three weeks after Clara drove me to the station and met Rutkovsky I got a letter from her saying she wasn’t staying in New York during her two-week break but was going to Montana instead with a friend from her school—a man. She didn’t say who it was, but I was pretty sure it was Julian, the guy I’d argued with in the Cedar Tavern. She said she was sorry but it was over and she wouldn’t see me after she got back and that was that. Typical Clara. No beating around the bush. Very matter-of-fact. I wasn’t surprised. We’d hardly seen each other in those last weeks. I wasn’t even sure I cared that much. I just read the letter and tossed it toward the garbage and left it there. I didn’t try to call her. I didn’t try to write or argue with her about it or say anything. I told myself that we hadn’t gotten along since I’d started the job, that I’d changed and that we weren’t compatible anymore, that she wanted a suckass and a toady and not someone who stood up to her—and maybe this was partly true. But when I look back on the breakup I realize that it had an unexpected consequence. Clara was my last link to anything outside EMS. I’d moved to New York because of her. I had a few other friends in the city, but as I got further into the job I didn’t feel like calling them. I really didn’t feel like I had anything in common with anyone except the people at the station. They became my real friends. At work I’d talk to Rutkovsky and Verdis and Hatsuru. After work I’d hang out in the lot with LaFontaine and Marmol and Rivett. Before work I studied. And that was my whole world. My books and the time on the ambulance and the guys at the station. In a way it was easier that way, easier to let those outside connections slip away, to have the EMS world and EMS people be my only interactions. I didn’t have to explain anything to them. They understood. And so after that letter from Clara, LaFontaine,Verdis, Marmol, Rivett, and Rutkovsky became my only reality.

  The next week the chief called me up into his office. As I walked in he was holding up an envelope.

  “This came through for you,” he said.

  I took it and opened it. A green bar with gold l
ining.

  “The attendance and punctuality bar,” the chief said. “You haven’t missed a day or been late for more than six months. That shows dedication. Professionalism. All good signs. They say you’re on track to becoming an exceptional medic.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes.

  “Thanks, Chief,” I said.

  I could see what was going on. They were desperate for medics and had heard I’d split with my girlfriend and didn’t want me taking off. The punctuality bar was bullshit. I’d have been embarrassed to wear it. I put the bar back in the envelope.

  “Everyone says you’re fitting in. Doing a good job. The next will be a save bar. Keep up the good work.”

  “Thanks, Chief. Anything else?”

  “How’s Rut doing?” he asked with forced offhandedness.

  “Good,” I said.

  “Good to hear,” he said with a kind of joviality that was not at all natural to him.

  He gave me a long look, then, after a moment, made a brusque gesture.

  “Go on. Get into service.”

  I walked out, tossing the envelope in the garbage.

  “Most people cannot do this job forever. I know I could not do it for more than seven years. That was my limit. Seven years. But I didn’t admit it to myself until the very end. I treated amputations. I birthed stillborn babies. I had to tell a mother her child was no longer living. But taking myself out of service, admitting to myself that I was no longer fit to do the job, that was the hardest thing I ever did.”

  Verdis in an ER bed with his head bandaged and about ten people from the neighborhood crowded around him. Old women with ridiculous-looking straw hats and overly polite, overly articulate men in black suits from his church, and homeless-looking guys in ragged T-shirts—all of them elbowing each other, competing in their commiserating. Rutkovsky stood to the side of the bed, out of uniform, saying, “Get em out, will you, Verdis? Jesus. I need a minute ...” I’d just stepped out of the subway and was taking a shortcut through the ER on the way to the station when I saw Verdis there in one of the beds. Rutkovsky saw me walking up and said to me, “Verdis got his head hit somehow. Whatever he did, I’m sure he deserved it.”

  “I did, I did,” Verdis said, which made the whole crowd burst out in waves of protest. Rutkovsky could hardly control himself.

  “Get em out’ve here,” Rutkovsky yelled to the security guard who started easing the rabble out to the waiting room. As they left, Rutkovsky stood over the bed with his arms crossed. “So, what happened,Verdis? Out with it.”

  Verdis grinned sheepishly.

  “He probably didn’t know I was EMS. I was out of uniform. It’s my fault, really”

  “Of course it’s your fault,” Rutkovsky said.

  “I just hope his daughter’s OK. Could you find out? She lives on my block.”

  Another group of church ladies with weird hats started pouring into the ER, overwhelming the security guard, wailing theatrically when they saw Verdis’s bandaged head, waving handkerchiefs. Verdis was a sort of celebrity at his church. I think he’d helped out about half the people in Harlem in one way or another. “Can you not keep em out,” Rutkovsky yelled to the security guard, but the guard went to Verdis’s church, and there was no way he could manhandle the old ladies. They all came pouring down the aisle between the ER beds and the nurses’ station. Rutkovsky looked off in the distance a moment, expressionless, then turned and walked out. I followed him. Rutkovsky found Marmol outside the ER at the back of an ambulance, and said, “What happened?” and Marmol, who was an affable guy, a guy who was always joking around and seemed not to take anything seriously, said, “You know, Verdis. Mister Helper. Some girl on his block had two seizures. She was with her uncle. The guy wasn’t going to send her to the hospital. He was up to no good, apparently. Didn’t want his niece going in no matter what. He drags the seizing girl into the apartment. Verdis forced himself into the apartment to treat.”

  “Typical fucking Verdis,” Rutkovsky said.

  “The guy tooled Verdis up. A neighbor called the cops. The uncle takes off. The girl seized again. They took her in. She had a subdural bleed. Verdis saved her life.”

  “Who’s the uncle?”

  “Some neighborhood skel. If it was any of us he tooled up Verdis, would lose it, but it’s himself, so, he’s not even mad. He says, ‘I wasn’t in uniform ...”’

  “I wasn’t in uniform,” Rutkovsky echoed in disbelief. Then, “So, come on, who was it?”

  “Some guy with a harelip. The uncle. With a harelip. That’s all I know.”

  Rutkovsky took this in silently.

  “We’re working together today,” Marmol said to me. He motioned to Rutkovsky “This skel called in sick.”

  “You look sick,” I said to Rutkovsky.

  “I am,” he said.

  I went on to the station and signed in and when I came back Rutkovsky was gone. Verdis was discharged later that night, and the next day, on my way into the station, I passed through the hospital and saw a guy with a harelip in the trauma room next to a used crash cart. This guy had a broken arm and a few cracked ribs and a bluish, bloated, misshapen face, with teeth missing. I went on out of the hospital and on toward the station. Rutkovsky was already in the back of the ambulance. When he saw me coming from the ER he turned away, avoided my eyes, and pretended to arrange gauze in the cabinets.

  When the really hot weather began the average number of medical emergency jobs in the city went from 2,300 a day to around 3,600 and sometimes up above 4,000. North of 125th Street, heat meant irritable, tired, uncomfortable people crammed together on sidewalks, on stoops, and beneath awnings. It meant murders, clashes with police. It meant suicides, domestic disputes, everyone short-tempered, bickering with us, and us with them. It meant that they cancelled our vacations and our weekends and then increased the shifts from eight to twelve and then to sixteen hours. And we expected this. It was part of the job. And it’s not that we freaked out or lost our minds in any obvious way, but as one day bled into the next, and as our entire waking lives became a relentless round of stabbings, shootings, heart attacks, asthmatics, schizophrenics, bloated corpses, anything the city could offer up, I think we lost track of what was considered to be normal—the siren, the stretcher, the flashing lights, the needles, the blood, and the weeping relatives—that was everything life had to offer. And the relentless weirdness and banal horror of the job brought on a feeling of being at ease in those circumstances, of feeling offhand and even comfortable in the bizarre, alternate universe of medical emergencies, injuries, and sudden death. I remember breaking down a locked door and putting an old woman’s head between my legs and shoving a five-inch laryngoscope blade down her throat while her family watched and thinking that this was just an ordinary occurrence. Of feeling unsurprised as I walked through the shell of an abandoned building to find a kid against the wall, the kid pulling a hand from his belly to show coiled, blue intestines spilling out. Of idly seeing splintered bones pierced through skin. Of seeing the skull beneath the scalp, and the brain beneath the skull. Of seeing eyeballs popped out and lying there with the ganglia still attached. Of seeing the chest open and the heart still beating with an unreal, spastic sort of motion, like a separate living thing. Of knowing at a glance how long a corpse had been there. Of knowing without even thinking about it the progression of lividity, rigor mortis, and gradual decay. And all of this the normal routine of our day. All of this coming at a time when it was easier to immerse myself in that world and not come up for air, when it was hard to judge how far any of us drifted because we only talked with each other.

  The first words out of Marmol’s mouth as he hefted himself into the ambulance were, “So, LaFontaine turned me on to this new diet. I can’t think of anything but food, so I’ve taken up a hobby to get my mind off it.”

  “What hobby?” Rutkovsky asked.

  “Ventriloquism.”

  “Ventriloquism?” Rutkovsky said.

  “Yeah. Ventri
loquism.”

  With his sketchbook, his offhand manner, and his eccentric hobbies, Marmol cracked us up. He was always preoccupied with some little creative project. He wrote songs. He wrote rhyming poems about dying patients. He wrote a limerick about a ten-year-old boy found dead, shot in the head. On this day in late June Verdis had called in sick, and with nothing better to do Marmol jumped on the ambulance with Rutkovsky and me. As soon as Marmol got on he held up a hand puppet made from a sock, yellow yarn for hair, and said, “Whenever I think of food, I talk instead. To take my mind off eating.”

  “Good idea,” Rutkovsky said.

  “Can I talk to your patients?” he said with the puppet.

  “I don’t care what you do to them,” Rutkovsky said.

  Our first job was for a seventy-year-old guy sitting on the bottom step of his stoop, face slick with sweat, holding a fist to his chest. Marmol ran up with that sock on his hand: “Hi! I’m Papi the puppet! Are you having chest pain?”

  “Yes.”

  “Talk to Papi!” Marmol said. Then, with the puppet, “What’s the pain feel like?”

  “It’s killing me. It just came on. It’s crushing my chest.”

  “Papi’s going to give you a nitro,” Rutkovsky said.

  Rutkovsky put the tiny pill in the puppet’s mouth and the puppet dropped it on to the old guy’s tongue. The guy didn’t seem to think it was unusual that we were talking to him with a puppet. We carried the guy to the ambulance.

  “Are you feeling short of breath?” Marmol asked with the puppet. “Are you nauseous? Dizzy? Are you still having chest pain? Papi says you get another nitro.”

  “I think I’m going to borrow Papi to talk to my ex-wife,” Rutkovsky said, which made the old guy having the heart attack laugh and then cough and put a fist to his chest.

  “Oh, Lord, you guys are killin’ me,” he said, which made us laugh louder.

  Our next job was for an overweight, naked woman strolling down Broadway. It was that orange light time of day in midsummer. A crowd of young men stood around in the sweltering heat, catcalling as this naked woman walked on past, eyes flat and still, totally oblivious. Rutkovsky seemed to feel vindicated.